marchat Plugins

Community plugin registry and releases for marchat - a terminal-native, offline-first group chat application.

Platform model (single-binary per OS/arch)

Plugins are now distributed as a single binary targeted to a specific platform (OS/architecture). The host validates the plugin binary at runtime against runtime.GOOS and runtime.GOARCH, and will return a clear error if the binary does not match the current system. This keeps plugin sizes minimal and avoids complex cross-platform packaging, while maintaining subprocess isolation and JSON-based communication.

• Expected archive name: PLUGIN-NAME-v<version>-<goos>-<goarch>.zip
• Inside the archive: the single plugin binary (.exe on Windows), an optional plugin.json manifest, and a README.md.
• Examples:
  • echo-plugin-v1.0.0-windows-amd64.zip
  • echo-plugin-v1.0.0-linux-amd64.zip
  • echo-plugin-v1.0.0-darwin-arm64.zip

If a user installs a plugin binary for the wrong platform, the host will refuse to start the plugin and display a helpful message indicating the required GOOS/GOARCH.

Available Plugins

• echo: Simple echo plugin for testing the plugin system

Installing Plugins

Use the marchat plugin store:

:store

Or install directly:

:install echo

Publishing plugins

When publishing a new plugin release, build and upload one archive per target platform and provide the corresponding checksums. A typical process:

1. Build platform-specific archives (see plugins/echo/README.md for examples and scripts):
   • echo-plugin-v2.0.0-windows-amd64.zip
   • echo-plugin-v2.0.0-linux-amd64.zip
   • echo-plugin-v2.0.0-darwin-amd64.zip
2. Compute SHA-256 checksums and publish alongside the archives.
3. Update registry.json to point to the platform-specific archive you intend to distribute for your audience. The host will still validate at runtime and show errors on mismatch.

See REGISTRY.md for detailed steps and an example entry.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for how to submit your own plugins.

License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.